Taking colour as an example, the colour that I see isn't the colour that the bird sees, — Michael
If there's no bird, but just a collection of wave/particles responding to another collection of wave/particles and imagining it's a bird. then how do we know how bird's see things? — Janus
I’m not saying that there isn’t a bird. I’m saying that birds aren’t the external world causes of experience. Waves/particles are the external world causes of experience. — Michael
It’s a mistake to reduce the everyday objects of perception to being these waves/particles. — Michael
'm still unclear on what you mean by 'inherent or intrinsic reality'. — Isaac
Common sense leads us to assume that we see in Gestalts because the world itself is constituted of whole objects and scenes, but this is incorrect. The reason events of the world appear holistic to animals is that animals perceive them in Gestalts. The atoms of a teacup do not collude together to form a teacup: The object is a teacup because it is constituted that way from a perspective outside of itself.
I asked that way round because I'm already aware of things you think are inherently/intrinsically real (numbers, lass of logic) but I still can't see from those examples alone where you're drawing the line between real and not-real. — Isaac
In contrast to contemporary philosophers, most 17th century philosophers held that reality comes in degrees—that some things that exist are more or less real than other things that exist. At least part of what dictates a being’s reality, according to these philosophers, is the extent to which its existence is dependent on other things: the less dependent a thing is on other things for its existence, the more real it is.
The way I've begun to integrate these ideas is in line with a kind of analytical idealsm, in which maths and what the medievals called universals are uniform structures of reason. That is they're not material in nature, nor derived from or supervening on the physical. but they're real as the constituents of rational thought. — Wayfarer
Sure, you and I and the bird act towards some of the external world-mess of wave-particles as if they are eggs; but that does not mean that there are no eggs. Exactly the opposite. Other examples may make the point clear: money and mortgages and property and universities only exist because we act as if they exist; and yet it would be wrong to suppose that therefore they are just imaginings. "just" does not do them justice. — Banno
...the thing created by the mind, or brain... — Metaphysician Undercover
In doing so , haven’t you swapped out intrinsic features of an external world for intrinsic features of an internal conceptual world? Why not go all the way and make both the natural world as we experience it and our mathematical concepts relational, contextual and contestable? Isn’t math a form of logic, and isnt logic a pragmatic construction? — Joshs
What's the consequence? — Tate
Exactly? Who knows. We have some decent models. No omniscience, though.
Say, were I to claim my experiences = reality, I'd be reducing my neighbor a bit heavy-handedly. Solipsism. — jorndoe
Maybe there are noumena after all — other minds? Per the comment above, "physicalities" comes before those other minds I've become so familiar with anyway. — jorndoe
Did you mean it's all goat? :Dthe "it's all Frog" philosophers — Tate
god? Where does a god appear in someone claiming experiences = reality? :brow: — jorndoe
But hey, if you want to scoff at metaphysics, then I'm all :up: — jorndoe
Wait ...
the "it's all Frog" philosophers
— Tate
Did you mean it's all goat? :D — jorndoe
In doing so , haven’t you swapped out intrinsic features of an external world for intrinsic features of an internal conceptual world? — Joshs
It appears that nobody today—not psychologists, not philosophers, not thinking laymen—are fully aware of how “magical” it is to see in Gestalt wholes. It gives us knowledge of many things in the same moment, all bound together in one act of conscious awareness. It presents us with an almost godlike overview of wide, stretched-out vistas. Gestalt vision can bring us a view of a whole vast landscape of rivers, villages and distant mountains, all in a single glance. Actually, it does far more than that: A Gestalt picture does not merely bind separate objects together, but creates an entirely new complex entity which did not exist before. It creates a new world of hierarchically structured new objects—a world which could not exist without Gestalt perception.
The scheme presented in this book provides a foundation for quantum bayesianism. As explained in the previous chapters, there is a radical divide between the physical world removed from observation—that is, the universe outside the range of any observer—and the aspects of reality created by the minds of living observers. It has been argued that it is the mind that divides reality into distinct, separate objects and creates the shapes and structure of solids. The mind organizes phenomena into complex and comprehensive wholes, and by doing this creates most of the reality that we perceive. In addition to this, the mind lures every individual into believing that what is perceived is present in the external world with the very features and qualities that our brain has assigned to it. Our biologically-designed model of reality is thus superposed on the physical stuff of the world and structures it. It is with this reality that we interact.
Isn’t math a form of logic, and isnt logic a pragmatic construction? — Joshs
Patterns emerge and are reinforced or altered in actual
contexts of interaction, rather than in rules or properties that supposedly exist before or outside of actual contexts — Joshs
Do you remember the dress that some people see as black and blue and others as white and gold? Same stimulus, different colours experienced.
Your account of colour would make this, and things like Locke's inverted spectrum hypothesis, incomprehensible. — Michael
Doesn't physicalism/materialism say that objects possess inherent reality, that they're real irrespective of your or my observation? And isn't that assertion central to the gist of the whole debate? — Wayfarer
The atoms of a teacup do not collude together to form a teacup
Einstein was compelled to say this by what was happening in physics during the 1920's, which threw his kind of scientific realism into doubt. That was essentially the background of the Einstein-Bohr debates which occupied many later decades (see Manjit Kumar 'Quantum: Einstein, Bohr and the Great Debate about the Nature of Reality'. Within that milieu, Heisenberg functions as a kind of modern representative of Platonism.) — Wayfarer
they're not material in nature, nor derived from or supervening on the physical. but they're real as the constituents of rational thought. It is not quite the same as conceptualism, which holds that all such things are in individual minds, because I believe that they are the properties of any and all minds. — Wayfarer
. That's why we can all see them as a teacup. — Isaac
And yet I couldn't just walk into a physics department and propose my own version of what's happening at a quantum scale, could I? — Isaac
The scientific method is after all founded on the reliable notions of observation, measurement and repeatability. A fact, as established by a measurement, should be objective, such that all observers can agree with it.
But in a paper recently published in Science Advances, we show that, in the micro-world of atoms and particles that is governed by the strange rules of quantum mechanics, two different observers are entitled to their own facts. In other words, according to our best theory of the building blocks of nature itself, facts can actually be subjective. — Objective Reality Doesn't Exist, Quantum Experiment Shows
I don't see how. I'm saying that 'green' is a property of a hidden state which cause most humans in most situations to respond in the way we describe as 'seeing green'. It doesn't require that these hidden states have this effect on everyone, nor does it require that they have this effect at all times in all contexts. — Isaac
We see them as teacups, because our culture drinks tea. — Wayfarer
The results are somewhat constrained, but not completely. And that is why the question of the interpretation of physics is still very much an unsolved issue. — Wayfarer
By the 'constituents of rational thought' I'm referring to such things as the rules of logic and arithmetic, and so on. Not just any random thought that pops into your head. — Wayfarer
The "green" in "seeing green" doesn't mean the same thing as your suggested "green" as a property of a hidden state. The former is what most people understand colour to be. — Michael
When I say "the colour that I see isn't the colour that you see" — Michael
If colour was the property of a hidden state then how do you make sense of two people seeing different colours when looking at the same thing? — Michael
This is the problem when you try to use the same labels that we use to refer to features of experience to also refer to the external world causes of those experiences. It leads us susceptible to equivocation. — Michael
there's a very big difference between saying that the cup that I see (in the context of "seeing a cup") is some external world thing and saying that some external world things cause most humans to see a cup. — Michael
So the expression "the post box is red" wouldn't make sense to most people? They'd say "the post box causes me to see red"? — Isaac
I seriously don't know anyone who speaks that way in normal conversation. People might say "I see the dress as green, you see it as blue". They're still talking about the colour of the dress (the hidden state we're modelling), they're not talking about the content of their minds. — Isaac
I've answered that already. The label we apply to hidden states is based on the response those states normally produce in most contexts. The process doesn't require that such states always produce that response in all contexts. — Isaac
OK, so you agree that there exists some external world thing which causes most humans to have the response we call 'seeing a cup'.
What should we call that?
I propose we should call it 'a cup'. — Isaac
This seems to be the salient issue: there is a world that is a mess of wave-particles; and there is a world that is eggs on a beach. They are the same world. — Banno
Get involved in philosophical discussions about knowledge, truth, language, consciousness, science, politics, religion, logic and mathematics, art, history, and lots more. No ads, no clutter, and very little agreement — just fascinating conversations.